


Destined

by GemmaRose



Series: Fucked Up Family AU [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreams, Gen, Kid Fic, Parent-Child Relationship, Prophetic Dreams, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 10:12:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17282129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GemmaRose/pseuds/GemmaRose
Summary: Keith may not be the Blue Paladin, but he isaPaladin. That thin link was enough for Blue to call him to her from across the desert. From across her cavern? Oh, she can do so much more.Written for the Dreamscape Zine on tumblr.





	Destined

Krolia looked up from her workstation for the fifth time in as many minutes, mouth pressing into a thin line. Keith was never this quiet; she’d expected him to be all but literally bouncing off the cavern walls when she agreed to bring him along today, and for the first fifteen minutes or so he had been. Since he sat down in front of the Blue Lion, though, he’d hardly moved. She would’ve thought he’d fallen asleep if not for the fact that he was quite adamantly Too Big For Naps now and his head was tilted back. If she focused, she could see his mouth moving, talking to the Lion quietly enough that his voice didn’t carry over to her.

“You behaving over there?” she called out to him, and he turned to give her a bright grin.

“Yep!” he chirped, and went right back to chattering at the Blue Lion. Perhaps it was a human thing? She’d heard Kevin talking to the car more than once when he thought she was out of earshot, and he frequently tried to reason with the household appliances despite the fact that even the ones with AI were far too simplistic to be deliberately disobedient. Keith was young, with an active imagination, and the Voltron ship resembled an animal enough that it wasn’t unreasonable to think he might be holding a one-sided conversation with it like he did with his favourite toys.

The final check came back clear, same as ever, and Krolia powered down the terminal before walking over to where her son sat. He was telling the Blue Lion about one of the kids in his class, and she felt her lips curl up in a smile as he switched to explaining about the art project he was going to finish tomorrow. “Keith,” she called, and he turned to blink those big purple eyes at her. “I’m going outside to start up the bike. Will you be ready to leave in five minutes?”

“Yeah, Mom,” he nodded, and turned back to face the Blue Lion. “So, anyways...”

She shook her head, chuckling to herself as she headed out to the hoverbike parked just inside the entrance, out of the sun. The seat was warm to the touch but not hot, and once the engine was running she double checked the safety bar in back and its attached strap. She personally thought it was a bit overkill, but Kevin insisted that it remain until they were sure Keith had grown into his galran durability, even though he already had the balance and reflexes to stay safely seated behind her without an aid.

“Ready to go?” she asked as she walked back into the domed cavern, and Keith nodded as he got to his feet.

“Bye, Blue!” he waved to the Lion, and Krolia smiled as she caught his hand in hers.

“Did you have an interesting conversation?” she asked, and he nodded excitedly.

“Can we come back and see her again tomorrow?” he bounced with each step as he kept pace with her, somehow still full of energy after a whole day of running errands with her.

“Mm, don’t you have school tomorrow?” she teased, releasing his hand so he could clamber up onto the bike.

“After school?” he asked hopefully, and she shook her head.

“After school you’ve got homework, and dinner, and then it’s movie night, remember?” she reminded him, buckling the safety belt around his waist. He brightened at the prospect of watching a movie, and she scooped up the smaller helmet off the ground to pop on his head before swinging a leg over the bike. “Hold on,” she said as she donned her own, and waited until she felt Keith’s arms wrap dutifully around her to gun the engine. His laughter was snatched away by the wind, but she could feel it in his chest where he pressed against her, little fingers curled tight in the front of her protective jacket.

She would have to make sure he didn’t write anything about the Blue Lion on the little worksheet he had to fill out about what he did today, but she couldn’t bring herself to regret letting Keith come to ‘work’ with her instead of his dad this year. It had been a good day.

\---

“Here,” Krolia set a small stack of papers down in front of Keith, along with his box of crayons. “Why don’t you colour while I do the dishes?”

“And then we can go outside?” he asked hopefully, and she nodded. Normally she wouldn’t have to worry, but normally Keith would be at the park with his father right about now, where scorpions were a minimal hazard. Luckily the chance to draw was enough to keep him busy, and Krolia turned on the radio as she started on the dishes from breakfast. She let the chatter wash over her as she worked, familiar voices and advertisements settling into comfortable background noise. She was nearly done when she heard Keith speaking, and wiped a hand on her jeans before reaching out to turn down the radio, one ear cocking back towards her son.

“I’m sorry, Keith, I didn’t catch that.”

“Catch what?” Keith asked, and she looked over her shoulder to see him frowning at her.

“You were saying something?” she prompted, and after a moment he smiled.

“It’s okay, I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Oh?” Krolia grabbed the dry towel from the oven door handle and wiped her hands off, turning to face her son completely. “Who were you talking to, then?”

“Bright-eyes,” he said, still smiling as he turned back to the table and sifted through the small pile of drawings he’d made. “Him!” he held up a picture of a boy on a beach, brown skin and bright blue eyes rendered in crayon.

“He doesn’t look like the Bright-eyes from the movie we watched,” she pointed out as Keith set the drawing back down.

“Cuz he’s not,” Keith picked up his green crayon again and went back to shading in the dress of his current drawing subject. “He’s my new friend.”

“A new friend, huh?” Krolia’s lips quirked up in a smile. “And where did you meet this new friend?”

“In my dreams,” Keith said matter-of-fact-ly, and Krolia smiled wider. It was positively adorable, how humans could fabricate whole people to be friends with just from scraps of information. One of the many human traits she was glad her son had inherited from his father.

“Do you want to tell me about him?” Krolia asked, picking up the drawing and moving to stick it on the fridge with a little magnet.

“I guess,” Keith shrugged, and Krolia returned to the sink.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” she reminded him, picking up the dish scrubber again. “But I like hearing you talk about things you enjoy.”

“Bright-eyes isn’t a thing,” Keith huffed. “He’s my _friend_.”

“Of course,” Krolia nodded. “Where does he live?”

“At the beach,” Keith answered immediately. “Not the same beach as Teddy though.”

“Teddy?” Krolia glanced over her shoulder.

“He’s from the dreams too,” Keith said offhandedly, and Krolia frowned as she set to finishing the last of the dishes.

“How many new friends have you dreamed up?” she asked cautiously.

“Four,” Keith sounded like he was smiling, but she didn’t look. “There’s Bright-eyes, and Teddy, and Flyboy, and Birdy.”

“Birdy?” Krolia couldn’t help but smile. “Do they have wings?”

“Nah. Her hair just looks kinda like a bird.”

She chuckled at the mental image.

“Mom, look.”

She glanced over her shoulder, and laughed a little more at the way Keith was pushing his hair up in back, his face pinched in concentration. “Very bird-like,” she assured him, and he went back to his colouring. “So, tell me about them,” she coaxed as she set to rinsing. “What’s Flyboy like?”

“ _Cool_ ,” Keith said emphatically. “He’s the coolest, and biggest, that’s why he gets to be our leader.”

Leader? Krolia raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. It seemed strange that Keith would create friends for himself and not make himself the center of attention.

“And why’s he called Flyboy?” she asked instead, hearing the sound of crayon on paper stop and then the shuffle of pages as Keith presumably started on a new drawing.

“Cuz he’s a flyboy,” Keith said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “He lives on a flying city, and has a flying bike, and he’s like those flyboy guys from Dad’s old movies.”

“A flying city, huh?” Krolia grinned. “You’ve got quite the imagination.”

“He’s not imaginary, he’s from my dreams,” Keith insisted.

“Right, silly me,” Krolia grabbed the drying towel, wiping her hands off before starting on the dishes. “What about the others?”

“Birdy’s from the desert, like us,” Keith said enthusiastically. “She’s the littlest, but really smart!”

“Oh? And how smart is really smart?” she teased.

“Really, _really_ smart,” Keith’s hands smacked against the table. “She’s gonna make robots for us!”

“Robots to do what, clean your room?” she asked as she set the last dish upside down to finish drying and turned to face her son. “Because you’re going to need to do that later, if you want to make cookies for dessert.”

Keith’s face scrunched up, and he looked back at the half-finished drawing in front of him. “It’s _my_ room,” he huffed petulantly, and Krolia stooped to press a kiss to his temple.

“And you need to keep it clean,” she chastised him gently. “But first, how about you finish telling me about your dream friends?”

Keith perked up at the chance to put off cleaning his room a little longer, and Krolia let her hands rest on the back of his seat as he shuffled his drawings around on the table, laying out four single drawings side by side with the incomplete one in front of him. He frowned then, picking up the messy pile of unused paper to look under it. “Where’s Bright-eyes?”

“I put him on the fridge,” Krolia smiled, ruffling Keith’s hair. “It’s a very good drawing.”

“His smile should be brighter,” Keith huffed, looking back at the line of drawings. “And he goes here,” he patted the empty space next to what was unmistakably a drawing of himself, wearing his favourite red shirt and holding a sword and shield. “Then there’s Flyboy,” he tapped the bottom of the drawing next to his adorable little self-portrait, an older-looking boy in a black tank top and purple pants, hands on his hips and face turned to the side like the cover of a comic book. Colourful clouds surrounded him, no ground in sight.

“Is he flying?” she asked, and Keith shrugged.

“That’s just what it looked like in the dreams,” he said, scratching at a bit of stray wax on the paper. “Well, sorta.”

“Only sorta?”

“Yeah. It was like that at first, in the floating city, but then we left that planet and went floating in space with all these pretty nebulas and galaxies. But I don’t have enough colours to do that, so,” he shrugged, bringing his hand up to pick the wax from under his fingernail. Krolia made a mental note to check the price of coloured pencils next time she went shopping, or a bigger box of crayons. Keith was wearing through his current one pretty fast, after all.

“What about him?” Krolia pointed at the boy with bright yellow eyes and what looked like orange tattoos on his dark skin.

“That’s Teddy,” Keith said, smiling anew. “He’s big, and strong, and he’s good at hugging!”

“Good at hugging, huh?” Krolia grinned, scooping Keith from his seat and squeezing him as he squealed. “Is he this good?”

“Mom!” Keith laughed, and she set him gently back down in his seat.

“You can always ask me for a hug, kitling,” she reminded him, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

“I know, Mom,” he smiled up at her, and she pressed another kiss to his forehead before her eyes landed on the drawing that could only be of Birdy.

“I thought you said your smart friend lived in the desert,” she frowned, leaning over the chair to pick up the picture.

“She does,” Keith looked up at her, then back down at his incomplete drawing, picking up his crayons again.

“So why the trees?”

“Felt right,” he shrugged. “Plus, every time she touched something that wasn’t a robot part, stuff would come growing out of it to help. There were vines _everywhere_ , it was really cool!”

“Cool, huh,” Krolia stared blankly at the picture, slowly reaching over Keith’s head to put it back in line. Only, it wasn’t a line was it. Keith was meticulous, but he’d not laid the papers edge to edge with the tops and bottoms aligned. Instead they were in an arc, sloping up to the drawing of Flyboy in the middle. Teddy on a beach with a mountain in the background, gold and brown and grey. Birdy surrounded by trees and greenery. Keith’s own page showed him at the top of a volcano. Flyboy’s was meant to be in the void of space but colours surrounded him instead, one to each limb. She turned her head, looking at the picture she’d placed on the fridge. Blue and blue and more blue.

“Keith, kitling, what do you and your friends talk about in these dreams of yours?” she asked, claws digging into the back of Keith’s chair. It was too much, too close to be coincidence, but it _couldn’t be_. “Do you remember at all?”

“Just with Bright-eyes,” he answered readily, oblivious to her death grip on the chair. “The dreams always start and end with him, and before I get to see the rest he tells me I gotta remember them, but it always sounds like-” he made noises with his mouth that weren’t words, imitating sounds that Krolia had only ever heard in recordings. The sound of crashing waves.

“And then after Teddy I get to see him again,” he continued. “We don’t talk much then, just go swimming. Hey, Mom, can we go to the pool later?” he looked up at her, easy smile falling from his face. “Mom?”

“Keith, kitling,” she forced her hands to uncurl from the back of his chair and crouched so they were the same height. “I’ve got some very important questions for you, and you need to tell me the truth, okay?”

“Okay,” he nodded, eyes wide and confused. He was so small, so innocent.

“These dreams, are they always the same?”

He nodded, clutching his crayon tight.

“Do you remember when you started having them?”

“Thursday,” he answered promptly, and Krolia had to bite back a growl of frustration.

“Thank you, kitling,” she brushed his hair back, putting on the softest smile she could muster. “How about you go clean your room, and then we can go to the pool.”

“Alright,” he nodded, setting his crayon down on the table. “Mom, is everything okay?”

“It’s fine, kitling,” she leaned in and kissed his forehead again. “Nothing you have to worry about.”

“Alright,” he frowned, and she pushed herself to her feet with a soft sigh as he slid off his chair and headed up to his room.

He was supposed to be safe. This backwater world, so far from the Empire’s edge, was supposed to be _safe_. Safe from Zarkon, safe from the war, safe from anything that would take away the human style family she’d built for herself. She wanted to hit something, but there was nobody to blame. Keith _had_ been safe, he’d been untouched by the war, ignorant of the threat the Empire posed to other worlds, a normal kit with a normal future. And then she’d brought him into contact with the Blue Lion.

She’d watched over the beast-ship for years and never heard so much as a whisper. She brought Keith to it for half an hour and it began sending him dreams. She gritted her teeth. Inhaled, exhaled. Unclenched her fists and opened her eyes. The drawing he’d abandoned was almost done, himself and the children from his dreams all fully drawn and holding hands but floating in a white void. Blue, red, black, green, gold. A sequence she’d seen in countless illustrations, elemental associations she’d read in ancient texts while preparing for her mission.

Much as she’d love to deny it, to keep Keith home and safe, she wasn’t stupid enough to try to fight a Lion of Voltron. But nor would she let her son grow up defenseless, unprepared for the destiny chosen for him. She’d make sure that he had the training needed to survive, no matter when the Blue Lion came for her claim. With any luck it would be years yet, Keith wasn’t even old enough to drive and if the green one was even younger... 

“Done with my room!” Keith called out, and Krolia startled.

“Are you sure?” she called up to him. “I’ll be checking when I come up there to get ready.”

“Uhhh, take your time with that!”

She chuckled and shook her head, turning her attention to putting Keith’s crayons back in their box and neatly stacking his drawings up in their proper order, the group picture on top. Tonight she would talk to Kevin, and tomorrow Keith’s training would start, but today they would go to the pool, and Keith would have fun, and they would be a normal family. Or, well, as normal a family as they could be.


End file.
